SAN MATEO, Calif. (KNX) – An investigation was launched after a 93-year-old resident at a San Mateo home care facility died after ingesting dishwashing liquid.
On Sunday around 8 p.m., a San Mateo Police Department patrol officer responded to the Atria Hillside care home facility following a report of a woman being poisoned.
An investigation revealed three residents were hospitalized after “ingesting toxic chemicals” and that one of them, 93-year-old woman, had died.
The facility confirmed in a statement to KRON-4 that the three residents were “mistakenly being served dishwashing liquid as drinking juice.”
The news station identified the 93-year-old woman as Gertrude Elizabeth Murison Maxwell. Her daughter, Marcia Cutchin, told the outlet her mother had “severe blistering of her mouth and throat and esophagus”, and that the facility said the substance was “an alkaline cleaning solution that eats protein.”
Cutchin went on to say that first responders told her they believed the patients, who reportedly suffered from dementia, ingested it on their own. Cutchin, however, told KRON-4 she doesn’t believe that could’ve happened.
“Many people, like my mother, you have to hold a cup to her mouth and tip it into her mouth,” Cutchin said.
San Mateo's District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told ABC-7 that while he doesn’t think it was intentional, he won’t rule out negligence.
"If it was people not being careful with the liquids and people suffered harm or death by it, that would be of course could be a very significant lawsuit out of it. Technically there is a thing in the criminal law called criminal negligence," he said.
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